Title: Phaedo
       The Last Hours Of Socrates
Author: Plato


INTRODUCTION.

After an interval of some months or years, and at Phlius, a town of
Peloponnesus, the tale of the last hours of Socrates is narrated to
Echecrates and other Phliasians by Phaedo the 'beloved disciple.' The
Dialogue necessarily takes the form of a narrative, because Socrates has
to be described acting as well as speaking. The minutest particulars of
the event are interesting to distant friends, and the narrator has an
equal interest in them.

During the voyage of the sacred ship to and from Delos, which has
occupied thirty days, the execution of Socrates has been deferred.
(Compare Xen. Mem.) The time has been passed by him in conversation with
a select company of disciples. But now the holy season is over, and the
disciples meet earlier than usual in order that they may converse with
Socrates for the last time. Those who were present, and those who might
have been expected to be present, are mentioned by name. There are
Simmias and Cebes (Crito), two disciples of Philolaus whom Socrates
'by his enchantments has attracted from Thebes' (Mem.), Crito the aged
friend, the attendant of the prison, who is as good as a friend--these
take part in the conversation. There are present also, Hermogenes,
from whom Xenophon derived his information about the trial of Socrates
(Mem.), the 'madman' Apollodorus (Symp.), Euclid and Terpsion from
Megara (compare Theaet.), Ctesippus, Antisthenes, Menexenus, and some
other less-known members of the Socratic circle, all of whom are silent
auditors. Aristippus, Cleombrotus, and Plato are noted as absent. Almost
as soon as the friends of Socrates enter the prison Xanthippe and her
children are sent home in the care of one of Crito's servants.
Socrates himself has just been released from chains, and is led by this
circumstance to make the natural remark that 'pleasure follows pain.'
(Observe that Plato is preparing the way for his doctrine of the
alternation of opposites.) 'Aesop would have represented them in a fable
as a two-headed creature of the gods.' The mention of Aesop reminds
Cebes of a question which had been asked by Evenus the poet (compare
Apol.): 'Why Socrates, who was not a poet, while in prison had been
putting Aesop into verse?'--'Because several times in his life he had
been warned in dreams that he should practise music; and as he was about
to die and was not certain of what was meant, he wished to fulfil the
admonition in the letter as well as in the spirit, by writing verses as
well as by cultivating philosophy. Tell this to Evenus; and say that I
would have him follow me in death.' 'He is not at all the sort of man
to comply with your request, Socrates.' 'Why, is he not a philosopher?'
'Yes.' 'Then he will be willing to die, although he will not take his
own life, for that is held to be unlawful.'

Cebes asks why suicide is thought not to be right, if death is to be
accounted a good? Well, (1) according to one explanation, because man is
a prisoner, who must not open the door of his prison and run away--this
is the truth in a 'mystery.' Or (2) rather, because he is not his own
property, but a possession of the gods, and has no right to make away
with that which does not belong to him. But why, asks Cebes, if he is a
possession of the gods, should he wish to die and leave them? For he is
under their protection; and surely he cannot take better care of himself
than they take of him. Simmias explains that Cebes is really referring
to Socrates, whom they think too unmoved at the prospect of leaving the
gods and his friends. Socrates answers that he is going to other gods
who are wise and good, and perhaps to better friends; and he professes
that he is ready to defend himself against the charge of Cebes.
The company shall be his judges, and he hopes that he will be more
successful in convincing them than he had been in convincing the court.

The philosopher desires death--which the wicked world will insinuate
that he also deserves: and perhaps he does, but not in any sense which
they are capable of understanding. Enough of them: the real question
is, What is the nature of that death which he desires? Death is
the separation of soul and body--and the philosopher desires such
a separation. He would like to be freed from the dominion of bodily
pleasures and of the senses, which are always perturbing his mental
vision. He wants to get rid of eyes and ears, and with the light of the
mind only to behold the light of truth. All the evils and impurities
and necessities of men come from the body. And death separates him from
these corruptions, which in life he cannot wholly lay aside. Why then
should he repine when the hour of separation arrives? Why, if he is dead
while he lives, should he fear that other death, through which alone he
can behold wisdom in her purity?

Besides, the philosopher has notions of good and evil unlike those of
other men. For they are courageous because they are afraid of greater
dangers, and temperate because they desire greater pleasures. But he
disdains this balancing of pleasures and pains, which is the exchange
of commerce and not of virtue. All the virtues, including wisdom, are
regarded by him only as purifications of the soul. And this was the
meaning of the founders of the mysteries when they said, 'Many are the
wand-bearers but few are the mystics.' (Compare Matt. xxii.: 'Many are
called but few are chosen.') And in the hope that he is one of these
mystics, Socrates is now departing. This is his answer to any one who
charges him with indifference at the prospect of leaving the gods and
his friends.

Still, a fear is expressed that the soul upon leaving the body may
vanish away like smoke or air. Socrates in answer appeals first of all
to the old Orphic tradition that the souls of the dead are in the world
below, and that the living come from them. This he attempts to found
on a philosophical assumption that all opposites--e.g. less, greater;
weaker, stronger; sleeping, waking; life, death--are generated out of
each other. Nor can the process of generation be only a passage from
living to dying, for then all would end in death. The perpetual sleeper
(Endymion) would be no longer distinguished from the rest of mankind.
The circle of nature is not complete unless the living come from the
dead as well as pass to them.

The Platonic doctrine of reminiscence is then adduced as a confirmation
of the pre-existence of the soul. Some proofs of this doctrine are
demanded. One proof given is the same as that of the Meno, and is
derived from the latent knowledge of mathematics, which may be elicited
from an unlearned person when a diagram is presented to him. Again,
there is a power of association, which from seeing Simmias may remember
Cebes, or from seeing a picture of Simmias may remember Simmias. The
lyre may recall the player of the lyre, and equal pieces of wood or
stone may be associated with the higher notion of absolute equality. But
here observe that material equalities fall short of the conception of
absolute equality with which they are compared, and which is the measure
of them. And the measure or standard must be prior to that which is
measured, the idea of equality prior to the visible equals. And if prior
to them, then prior also to the perceptions of the senses which recall
them, and therefore either given before birth or at birth. But all men
have not this knowledge, nor have any without a process of reminiscence;
which is a proof that it is not innate or given at birth, unless indeed
it was given and taken away at the same instant. But if not given to
men in birth, it must have been given before birth--this is the only
alternative which remains. And if we had ideas in a former state, then
our souls must have existed and must have had intelligence in a former
state. The pre-existence of the soul stands or falls with the doctrine
of ideas.

It is objected by Simmias and Cebes that these arguments only prove a
former and not a future existence. Socrates answers this objection by
recalling the previous argument, in which he had shown that the living
come from the dead. But the fear that the soul at departing may vanish
into air (especially if there is a wind blowing at the time) has not yet
been charmed away. He proceeds: When we fear that the soul will vanish
away, let us ask ourselves what is that which we suppose to be liable
to dissolution? Is it the simple or the compound, the unchanging or the
changing, the invisible idea or the visible object of sense? Clearly the
latter and not the former; and therefore not the soul, which in her own
pure thought is unchangeable, and only when using the senses descends
into the region of change. Again, the soul commands, the body serves:
in this respect too the soul is akin to the divine, and the body to the
mortal. And in every point of view the soul is the image of divinity and
immortality, and the body of the human and mortal. And whereas the
body is liable to speedy dissolution, the soul is almost if not quite
indissoluble. (Compare Tim.) Yet even the body may be preserved for ages
by the embalmer's art: how unlikely, then, that the soul will perish and
be dissipated into air while on her way to the good and wise God!
She has been gathered into herself, holding aloof from the body, and
practising death all her life long, and she is now finally released from
the errors and follies and passions of men, and for ever dwells in the
company of the gods.

But the soul which is polluted and engrossed by the corporeal, and has
no eye except that of the senses, and is weighed down by the bodily
appetites, cannot attain to this abstraction. In her fear of the world
below she lingers about the sepulchre, loath to leave the body which
she loved, a ghostly apparition, saturated with sense, and therefore
visible. At length entering into some animal of a nature congenial to
her former life of sensuality or violence, she takes the form of an ass,
a wolf or a kite. And of these earthly souls the happiest are those who
have practised virtue without philosophy; they are allowed to pass into
gentle and social natures, such as bees and ants. (Compare Republic,
Meno.) But only the philosopher who departs pure is permitted to enter
the company of the gods. (Compare Phaedrus.) This is the reason why he
abstains from fleshly lusts, and not because he fears loss or disgrace,
which is the motive of other men. He too has been a captive, and the
willing agent of his own captivity. But philosophy has spoken to him,
and he has heard her voice; she has gently entreated him, and brought
him out of the 'miry clay,' and purged away the mists of passion and
the illusions of sense which envelope him; his soul has escaped from the
influence of pleasures and pains, which are like nails fastening her to
the body. To that prison-house she will not return; and therefore she
abstains from bodily pleasures--not from a desire of having more or
greater ones, but because she knows that only when calm and free from
the dominion of the body can she behold the light of truth.

Simmias and Cebes remain in doubt; but they are unwilling to raise
objections at such a time. Socrates wonders at their reluctance. Let
them regard him rather as the swan, who, having sung the praises of
Apollo all his life long, sings at his death more lustily than ever.
Simmias acknowledges that there is cowardice in not probing truth to the
bottom. 'And if truth divine and inspired is not to be had, then let
a man take the best of human notions, and upon this frail bark let him
sail through life.' He proceeds to state his difficulty: It has been
argued that the soul is invisible and incorporeal, and therefore
immortal, and prior to the body. But is not the soul acknowledged to
be a harmony, and has she not the same relation to the body, as the
harmony--which like her is invisible--has to the lyre? And yet the
harmony does not survive the lyre. Cebes has also an objection, which
like Simmias he expresses in a figure. He is willing to admit that the
soul is more lasting than the body. But the more lasting nature of the
soul does not prove her immortality; for after having worn out many
bodies in a single life, and many more in successive births and
deaths, she may at last perish, or, as Socrates afterwards restates the
objection, the very act of birth may be the beginning of her death, and
her last body may survive her, just as the coat of an old weaver is left
behind him after he is dead, although a man is more lasting than his
coat. And he who would prove the immortality of the soul, must prove not
only that the soul outlives one or many bodies, but that she outlives
them all.

The audience, like the chorus in a play, for a moment interpret the
feelings of the actors; there is a temporary depression, and then the
enquiry is resumed. It is a melancholy reflection that arguments, like
men, are apt to be deceivers; and those who have been often deceived
become distrustful both of arguments and of friends. But this
unfortunate experience should not make us either haters of men or haters
of arguments. The want of health and truth is not in the argument, but
in ourselves. Socrates, who is about to die, is sensible of his own
weakness; he desires to be impartial, but he cannot help feeling that he
has too great an interest in the truth of the argument. And therefore he
would have his friends examine and refute him, if they think that he is
in error.

At his request Simmias and Cebes repeat their objections. They do not
go to the length of denying the pre-existence of ideas. Simmias is of
opinion that the soul is a harmony of the body. But the admission of the
pre-existence of ideas, and therefore of the soul, is at variance with
this. (Compare a parallel difficulty in Theaet.) For a harmony is
an effect, whereas the soul is not an effect, but a cause; a harmony
follows, but the soul leads; a harmony admits of degrees, and the soul
has no degrees. Again, upon the supposition that the soul is a harmony,
why is one soul better than another? Are they more or less harmonized,
or is there one harmony within another? But the soul does not admit of
degrees, and cannot therefore be more or less harmonized. Further, the
soul is often engaged in resisting the affections of the body, as Homer
describes Odysseus 'rebuking his heart.' Could he have written this
under the idea that the soul is a harmony of the body? Nay rather, are
we not contradicting Homer and ourselves in affirming anything of the
sort?

The goddess Harmonia, as Socrates playfully terms the argument of
Simmias, has been happily disposed of; and now an answer has to be given
to the Theban Cadmus. Socrates recapitulates the argument of Cebes,
which, as he remarks, involves the whole question of natural growth or
causation; about this he proposes to narrate his own mental experience.
When he was young he had puzzled himself with physics: he had enquired
into the growth and decay of animals, and the origin of thought, until
at last he began to doubt the self-evident fact that growth is the
result of eating and drinking; and so he arrived at the conclusion that
he was not meant for such enquiries. Nor was he less perplexed with
notions of comparison and number. At first he had imagined himself to
understand differences of greater and less, and to know that ten is two
more than eight, and the like. But now those very notions appeared to
him to contain a contradiction. For how can one be divided into two? Or
two be compounded into one? These are difficulties which Socrates cannot
answer. Of generation and destruction he knows nothing. But he has a
confused notion of another method in which matters of this sort are to
be investigated. (Compare Republic; Charm.)

Then he heard some one reading out of a book of Anaxagoras, that mind is
the cause of all things. And he said to himself: If mind is the cause
of all things, surely mind must dispose them all for the best. The new
teacher will show me this 'order of the best' in man and nature. How
great had been his hopes and how great his disappointment! For he found
that his new friend was anything but consistent in his use of mind as
a cause, and that he soon introduced winds, waters, and other eccentric
notions. (Compare Arist. Metaph.) It was as if a person had said that
Socrates is sitting here because he is made up of bones and muscles,
instead of telling the true reason--that he is here because the
Athenians have thought good to sentence him to death, and he has thought
good to await his sentence. Had his bones and muscles been left by him
to their own ideas of right, they would long ago have taken themselves
off. But surely there is a great confusion of the cause and condition
in all this. And this confusion also leads people into all sorts of
erroneous theories about the position and motions of the earth. None of
them know how much stronger than any Atlas is the power of the best. But
this 'best' is still undiscovered; and in enquiring after the cause, we
can only hope to attain the second best.

Now there is a danger in the contemplation of the nature of things, as
there is a danger in looking at the sun during an eclipse, unless the
precaution is taken of looking only at the image reflected in the water,
or in a glass. (Compare Laws; Republic.) 'I was afraid,' says Socrates,
'that I might injure the eye of the soul. I thought that I had better
return to the old and safe method of ideas. Though I do not mean to say
that he who contemplates existence through the medium of ideas sees
only through a glass darkly, any more than he who contemplates actual
effects.'

If the existence of ideas is granted to him, Socrates is of opinion that
he will then have no difficulty in proving the immortality of the soul.
He will only ask for a further admission:--that beauty is the cause of
the beautiful, greatness the cause of the great, smallness of the small,
and so on of other things. This is a safe and simple answer, which
escapes the contradictions of greater and less (greater by reason of
that which is smaller!), of addition and subtraction, and the other
difficulties of relation. These subtleties he is for leaving to wiser
heads than his own; he prefers to test ideas by the consistency of their
consequences, and, if asked to give an account of them, goes back to
some higher idea or hypothesis which appears to him to be the best,
until at last he arrives at a resting-place. (Republic; Phil.)

The doctrine of ideas, which has long ago received the assent of the
Socratic circle, is now affirmed by the Phliasian auditor to command
the assent of any man of sense. The narrative is continued; Socrates is
desirous of explaining how opposite ideas may appear to co-exist but do
not really co-exist in the same thing or person. For example, Simmias
may be said to have greatness and also smallness, because he is greater
than Socrates and less than Phaedo. And yet Simmias is not really great
and also small, but only when compared to Phaedo and Socrates. I use the
illustration, says Socrates, because I want to show you not only that
ideal opposites exclude one another, but also the opposites in us. I,
for example, having the attribute of smallness remain small, and cannot
become great: the smallness which is in me drives out greatness.

One of the company here remarked that this was inconsistent with the
old assertion that opposites generated opposites. But that, replies
Socrates, was affirmed, not of opposite ideas either in us or in
nature, but of opposition in the concrete--not of life and death, but
of individuals living and dying. When this objection has been removed,
Socrates proceeds: This doctrine of the mutual exclusion of opposites
is not only true of the opposites themselves, but of things which are
inseparable from them. For example, cold and heat are opposed; and fire,
which is inseparable from heat, cannot co-exist with cold, or snow,
which is inseparable from cold, with heat. Again, the number three
excludes the number four, because three is an odd number and four is
an even number, and the odd is opposed to the even. Thus we are able to
proceed a step beyond 'the safe and simple answer.' We may say, not
only that the odd excludes the even, but that the number three, which
participates in oddness, excludes the even. And in like manner, not only
does life exclude death, but the soul, of which life is the inseparable
attribute, also excludes death. And that of which life is the
inseparable attribute is by the force of the terms imperishable. If the
odd principle were imperishable, then the number three would not perish
but remove, on the approach of the even principle. But the immortal is
imperishable; and therefore the soul on the approach of death does not
perish but removes.

Thus all objections appear to be finally silenced. And now the
application has to be made: If the soul is immortal, 'what manner of
persons ought we to be?' having regard not only to time but to eternity.
For death is not the end of all, and the wicked is not released from his
evil by death; but every one carries with him into the world below that
which he is or has become, and that only.

For after death the soul is carried away to judgment, and when she has
received her punishment returns to earth in the course of ages. The wise
soul is conscious of her situation, and follows the attendant angel who
guides her through the windings of the world below; but the impure soul
wanders hither and thither without companion or guide, and is carried
at last to her own place, as the pure soul is also carried away to hers.
'In order that you may understand this, I must first describe to you the
nature and conformation of the earth.'

Now the whole earth is a globe placed in the centre of the heavens, and
is maintained there by the perfection of balance. That which we call the
earth is only one of many small hollows, wherein collect the mists and
waters and the thick lower air; but the true earth is above, and is in
a finer and subtler element. And if, like birds, we could fly to the
surface of the air, in the same manner that fishes come to the top of
the sea, then we should behold the true earth and the true heaven and
the true stars. Our earth is everywhere corrupted and corroded; and even
the land which is fairer than the sea, for that is a mere chaos or waste
of water and mud and sand, has nothing to show in comparison of the
other world. But the heavenly earth is of divers colours, sparkling with
jewels brighter than gold and whiter than any snow, having flowers and
fruits innumerable. And the inhabitants dwell some on the shore of the
sea of air, others in 'islets of the blest,' and they hold converse
with the gods, and behold the sun, moon and stars as they truly are, and
their other blessedness is of a piece with this.

The hollows on the surface of the globe vary in size and shape from that
which we inhabit: but all are connected by passages and perforations in
the interior of the earth. And there is one huge chasm or opening called
Tartarus, into which streams of fire and water and liquid mud are ever
flowing; of these small portions find their way to the surface and
form seas and rivers and volcanoes. There is a perpetual inhalation and
exhalation of the air rising and falling as the waters pass into the
depths of the earth and return again, in their course forming lakes
and rivers, but never descending below the centre of the earth; for on
either side the rivers flowing either way are stopped by a precipice.
These rivers are many and mighty, and there are four principal ones,
Oceanus, Acheron, Pyriphlegethon, and Cocytus. Oceanus is the river
which encircles the earth; Acheron takes an opposite direction, and
after flowing under the earth through desert places, at last reaches the
Acherusian lake,--this is the river at which the souls of the dead await
their return to earth. Pyriphlegethon is a stream of fire, which coils
round the earth and flows into the depths of Tartarus. The fourth river,
Cocytus, is that which is called by the poets the Stygian river, and
passes into and forms the lake Styx, from the waters of which it gains
new and strange powers. This river, too, falls into Tartarus.

The dead are first of all judged according to their deeds, and those who
are incurable are thrust into Tartarus, from which they never come out.
Those who have only committed venial sins are first purified of them,
and then rewarded for the good which they have done. Those who have
committed crimes, great indeed, but not unpardonable, are thrust
into Tartarus, but are cast forth at the end of a year by way of
Pyriphlegethon or Cocytus, and these carry them as far as the Acherusian
lake, where they call upon their victims to let them come out of the
rivers into the lake. And if they prevail, then they are let out and
their sufferings cease: if not, they are borne unceasingly into Tartarus
and back again, until they at last obtain mercy. The pure souls also
receive their reward, and have their abode in the upper earth, and a
select few in still fairer 'mansions.'

Socrates is not prepared to insist on the literal accuracy of this
description, but he is confident that something of the kind is true.
He who has sought after the pleasures of knowledge and rejected the
pleasures of the body, has reason to be of good hope at the approach of
death; whose voice is already speaking to him, and who will one day be
heard calling all men.

The hour has come at which he must drink the poison, and not much
remains to be done. How shall they bury him? That is a question which he
refuses to entertain, for they are burying, not him, but his dead body.
His friends had once been sureties that he would remain, and they shall
now be sureties that he has run away. Yet he would not die without the
customary ceremonies of washing and burial. Shall he make a libation of
the poison? In the spirit he will, but not in the letter. One request he
utters in the very act of death, which has been a puzzle to after ages.
With a sort of irony he remembers that a trifling religious duty is
still unfulfilled, just as above he desires before he departs to compose
a few verses in order to satisfy a scruple about a dream--unless,
indeed, we suppose him to mean, that he was now restored to health, and
made the customary offering to Asclepius in token of his recovery.

*****

1. The doctrine of the immortality of the soul has sunk deep into
the heart of the human race; and men are apt to rebel against any
examination of the nature or grounds of their belief. They do not like
to acknowledge that this, as well as the other 'eternal ideas; of
man, has a history in time, which may be traced in Greek poetry or
philosophy, and also in the Hebrew Scriptures. They convert feeling into
reasoning, and throw a network of dialectics over that which is really
a deeply-rooted instinct. In the same temper which Socrates reproves in
himself they are disposed to think that even fallacies will do no harm,
for they will die with them, and while they live they will gain by the
delusion. And when they consider the numberless bad arguments which have
been pressed into the service of theology, they say, like the companions
of Socrates, 'What argument can we ever trust again?' But there is a
better and higher spirit to be gathered from the Phaedo, as well as from
the other writings of Plato, which says that first principles should
be most constantly reviewed (Phaedo and Crat.), and that the highest
subjects demand of us the greatest accuracy (Republic); also that we
must not become misologists because arguments are apt to be deceivers.

2. In former ages there was a customary rather than a reasoned belief
in the immortality of the soul. It was based on the authority of the
Church, on the necessity of such a belief to morality and the order of
society, on the evidence of an historical fact, and also on analogies
and figures of speech which filled up the void or gave an expression
in words to a cherished instinct. The mass of mankind went on their
way busy with the affairs of this life, hardly stopping to think about
another. But in our own day the question has been reopened, and it is
doubtful whether the belief which in the first ages of Christianity
was the strongest motive of action can survive the conflict with a
scientific age in which the rules of evidence are stricter and the mind
has become more sensitive to criticism. It has faded into the distance
by a natural process as it was removed further and further from the
historical fact on which it has been supposed to rest. Arguments derived
from material things such as the seed and the ear of corn or transitions
in the life of animals from one state of being to another (the chrysalis
and the butterfly) are not 'in pari materia' with arguments from
the visible to the invisible, and are therefore felt to be no longer
applicable. The evidence to the historical fact seems to be weaker than
was once supposed: it is not consistent with itself, and is based upon
documents which are of unknown origin. The immortality of man must be
proved by other arguments than these if it is again to become a living
belief. We must ask ourselves afresh why we still maintain it, and seek
to discover a foundation for it in the nature of God and in the first
principles of morality.

3. At the outset of the discussion we may clear away a confusion. We
certainly do not mean by the immortality of the soul the immortality of
fame, which whether worth having or not can only be ascribed to a very
select class of the whole race of mankind, and even the interest in
these few is comparatively short-lived. To have been a benefactor to the
world, whether in a higher or a lower sphere of life and thought, is a
great thing: to have the reputation of being one, when men have passed
out of the sphere of earthly praise or blame, is hardly worthy of
consideration. The memory of a great man, so far from being immortal,
is really limited to his own generation:--so long as his friends or his
disciples are alive, so long as his books continue to be read, so long
as his political or military successes fill a page in the history of
his country. The praises which are bestowed upon him at his death hardly
last longer than the flowers which are strewed upon his coffin or the
'immortelles' which are laid upon his tomb. Literature makes the most
of its heroes, but the true man is well aware that far from enjoying an
immortality of fame, in a generation or two, or even in a much shorter
time, he will be forgotten and the world will get on without him.

4. Modern philosophy is perplexed at this whole question, which is
sometimes fairly given up and handed over to the realm of faith. The
perplexity should not be forgotten by us when we attempt to submit the
Phaedo of Plato to the requirements of logic. For what idea can we form
of the soul when separated from the body? Or how can the soul be united
with the body and still be independent? Is the soul related to the
body as the ideal to the real, or as the whole to the parts, or as the
subject to the object, or as the cause to the effect, or as the end to
the means? Shall we say with Aristotle, that the soul is the entelechy
or form of an organized living body? or with Plato, that she has a life
of her own? Is the Pythagorean image of the harmony, or that of the
monad, the truer expression? Is the soul related to the body as sight to
the eye, or as the boatman to his boat? (Arist. de Anim.) And in
another state of being is the soul to be conceived of as vanishing into
infinity, hardly possessing an existence which she can call her own,
as in the pantheistic system of Spinoza: or as an individual informing
another body and entering into new relations, but retaining her own
character? (Compare Gorgias.) Or is the opposition of soul and body a
mere illusion, and the true self neither soul nor body, but the union
of the two in the 'I' which is above them? And is death the assertion
of this individuality in the higher nature, and the falling away into
nothingness of the lower? Or are we vainly attempting to pass
the boundaries of human thought? The body and the soul seem to be
inseparable, not only in fact, but in our conceptions of them; and any
philosophy which too closely unites them, or too widely separates them,
either in this life or in another, disturbs the balance of human nature.
No thinker has perfectly adjusted them, or been entirely consistent with
himself in describing their relation to one another. Nor can we
wonder that Plato in the infancy of human thought should have confused
mythology and philosophy, or have mistaken verbal arguments for real
ones.

5. Again, believing in the immortality of the soul, we must still
ask the question of Socrates, 'What is that which we suppose to be
immortal?' Is it the personal and individual element in us, or the
spiritual and universal? Is it the principle of knowledge or of
goodness, or the union of the two? Is it the mere force of life which is
determined to be, or the consciousness of self which cannot be got rid
of, or the fire of genius which refuses to be extinguished? Or is there
a hidden being which is allied to the Author of all existence, who is
because he is perfect, and to whom our ideas of perfection give us a
title to belong? Whatever answer is given by us to these questions,
there still remains the necessity of allowing the permanence of evil, if
not for ever, at any rate for a time, in order that the wicked 'may not
have too good a bargain.' For the annihilation of evil at death, or the
eternal duration of it, seem to involve equal difficulties in the moral
government of the universe. Sometimes we are led by our feelings, rather
than by our reason, to think of the good and wise only as existing in
another life. Why should the mean, the weak, the idiot, the infant,
the herd of men who have never in any proper sense the use of reason,
reappear with blinking eyes in the light of another world? But our
second thought is that the hope of humanity is a common one, and that
all or none will be partakers of immortality. Reason does not allow us
to suppose that we have any greater claims than others, and experience
may often reveal to us unexpected flashes of the higher nature in
those whom we had despised. Why should the wicked suffer any more than
ourselves? had we been placed in their circumstances should we have been
any better than they? The worst of men are objects of pity rather than
of anger to the philanthropist; must they not be equally such to divine
benevolence? Even more than the good they have need of another life; not
that they may be punished, but that they may be educated. These are
a few of the reflections which arise in our minds when we attempt to
assign any form to our conceptions of a future state.

There are some other questions which are disturbing to us because we
have no answer to them. What is to become of the animals in a future
state? Have we not seen dogs more faithful and intelligent than men,
and men who are more stupid and brutal than any animals? Does their life
cease at death, or is there some 'better thing reserved' also for
them? They may be said to have a shadow or imitation of morality, and
imperfect moral claims upon the benevolence of man and upon the justice
of God. We cannot think of the least or lowest of them, the insect, the
bird, the inhabitants of the sea or the desert, as having any place in
a future world, and if not all, why should those who are specially
attached to man be deemed worthy of any exceptional privilege? When we
reason about such a subject, almost at once we degenerate into nonsense.
It is a passing thought which has no real hold on the mind. We may argue
for the existence of animals in a future state from the attributes of
God, or from texts of Scripture ('Are not two sparrows sold for one
farthing?' etc.), but the truth is that we are only filling up the void
of another world with our own fancies. Again, we often talk about
the origin of evil, that great bugbear of theologians, by which they
frighten us into believing any superstition. What answer can be made
to the old commonplace, 'Is not God the author of evil, if he knowingly
permitted, but could have prevented it?' Even if we assume that the
inequalities of this life are rectified by some transposition of human
beings in another, still the existence of the very least evil if it
could have been avoided, seems to be at variance with the love and
justice of God. And so we arrive at the conclusion that we are carrying
logic too far, and that the attempt to frame the world according to a
rule of divine perfection is opposed to experience and had better be
given up. The case of the animals is our own. We must admit that the
Divine Being, although perfect himself, has placed us in a state of life
in which we may work together with him for good, but we are very far
from having attained to it.

6. Again, ideas must be given through something; and we are always prone
to argue about the soul from analogies of outward things which may serve
to embody our thoughts, but are also partly delusive. For we cannot
reason from the natural to the spiritual, or from the outward to the
inward. The progress of physiological science, without bringing us
nearer to the great secret, has tended to remove some erroneous notions
respecting the relations of body and mind, and in this we have the
advantage of the ancients. But no one imagines that any seed of
immortality is to be discerned in our mortal frames. Most people have
been content to rest their belief in another life on the agreement of
the more enlightened part of mankind, and on the inseparable connection
of such a doctrine with the existence of a God--also in a less degree
on the impossibility of doubting about the continued existence of those
whom we love and reverence in this world. And after all has been
said, the figure, the analogy, the argument, are felt to be only
approximations in different forms to an expression of the common
sentiment of the human heart. That we shall live again is far more
certain than that we shall take any particular form of life.

7. When we speak of the immortality of the soul, we must ask further
what we mean by the word immortality. For of the duration of a living
being in countless ages we can form no conception; far less than a three
years' old child of the whole of life. The naked eye might as well try
to see the furthest star in the infinity of heaven. Whether time and
space really exist when we take away the limits of them may be doubted;
at any rate the thought of them when unlimited us so overwhelming to us
as to lose all distinctness. Philosophers have spoken of them as forms
of the human mind, but what is the mind without them? As then infinite
time, or an existence out of time, which are the only possible
explanations of eternal duration, are equally inconceivable to us, let
us substitute for them a hundred or a thousand years after death, and
ask not what will be our employment in eternity, but what will happen to
us in that definite portion of time; or what is now happening to those
who passed out of life a hundred or a thousand years ago. Do we imagine
that the wicked are suffering torments, or that the good are singing the
praises of God, during a period longer than that of a whole life, or
of ten lives of men? Is the suffering physical or mental? And does the
worship of God consist only of praise, or of many forms of service? Who
are the wicked, and who are the good, whom we venture to divide by a
hard and fast line; and in which of the two classes should we place
ourselves and our friends? May we not suspect that we are making
differences of kind, because we are unable to imagine differences
of degree?--putting the whole human race into heaven or hell for the
greater convenience of logical division? Are we not at the same time
describing them both in superlatives, only that we may satisfy the
demands of rhetoric? What is that pain which does not become deadened
after a thousand years? or what is the nature of that pleasure or
happiness which never wearies by monotony? Earthly pleasures and pains
are short in proportion as they are keen; of any others which are both
intense and lasting we have no experience, and can form no idea.
The words or figures of speech which we use are not consistent with
themselves. For are we not imagining Heaven under the similitude of
a church, and Hell as a prison, or perhaps a madhouse or chamber of
horrors? And yet to beings constituted as we are, the monotony of
singing psalms would be as great an infliction as the pains of hell,
and might be even pleasantly interrupted by them. Where are the actions
worthy of rewards greater than those which are conferred on the greatest
benefactors of mankind? And where are the crimes which according to
Plato's merciful reckoning,--more merciful, at any rate, than the
eternal damnation of so-called Christian teachers,--for every ten years
in this life deserve a hundred of punishment in the life to come?
We should be ready to die of pity if we could see the least of the
sufferings which the writers of Infernos and Purgatorios have attributed
to the damned. Yet these joys and terrors seem hardly to exercise an
appreciable influence over the lives of men. The wicked man when old,
is not, as Plato supposes (Republic), more agitated by the terrors of
another world when he is nearer to them, nor the good in an ecstasy at
the joys of which he is soon to be the partaker. Age numbs the sense of
both worlds; and the habit of life is strongest in death. Even the dying
mother is dreaming of her lost children as they were forty or fifty
years before, 'pattering over the boards,' not of reunion with them
in another state of being. Most persons when the last hour comes are
resigned to the order of nature and the will of God. They are not
thinking of Dante's Inferno or Paradiso, or of the Pilgrim's Progress.
Heaven and hell are not realities to them, but words or ideas; the
outward symbols of some great mystery, they hardly know what. Many
noble poems and pictures have been suggested by the traditional
representations of them, which have been fixed in forms of art and can
no longer be altered. Many sermons have been filled with descriptions
of celestial or infernal mansions. But hardly even in childhood did the
thought of heaven and hell supply the motives of our actions, or at any
time seriously affect the substance of our belief.

8. Another life must be described, if at all, in forms of thought
and not of sense. To draw pictures of heaven and hell, whether in the
language of Scripture or any other, adds nothing to our real knowledge,
but may perhaps disguise our ignorance. The truest conception which
we can form of a future life is a state of progress or education--a
progress from evil to good, from ignorance to knowledge. To this we are
led by the analogy of the present life, in which we see different races
and nations of men, and different men and women of the same nation,
in various states or stages of cultivation; some more and some less
developed, and all of them capable of improvement under favourable
circumstances. There are punishments too of children when they are
growing up inflicted by their parents, of elder offenders which are
imposed by the law of the land, of all men at all times of life,
which are attached by the laws of nature to the performance of certain
actions. All these punishments are really educational; that is to say,
they are not intended to retaliate on the offender, but to teach him
a lesson. Also there is an element of chance in them, which is another
name for our ignorance of the laws of nature. There is evil too
inseparable from good (compare Lysis); not always punished here, as good
is not always rewarded. It is capable of being indefinitely diminished;
and as knowledge increases, the element of chance may more and more
disappear.

For we do not argue merely from the analogy of the present state of this
world to another, but from the analogy of a probable future to which we
are tending. The greatest changes of which we have had experience as yet
are due to our increasing knowledge of history and of nature. They
have been produced by a few minds appearing in three or four favoured
nations, in a comparatively short period of time. May we be allowed to
imagine the minds of men everywhere working together during many ages
for the completion of our knowledge? May not the science of physiology
transform the world? Again, the majority of mankind have really
experienced some moral improvement; almost every one feels that he has
tendencies to good, and is capable of becoming better. And these germs
of good are often found to be developed by new circumstances, like
stunted trees when transplanted to a better soil. The differences
between the savage and the civilized man, or between the civilized
man in old and new countries, may be indefinitely increased. The first
difference is the effect of a few thousand, the second of a few hundred
years. We congratulate ourselves that slavery has become industry;
that law and constitutional government have superseded despotism and
violence; that an ethical religion has taken the place of Fetichism.
There may yet come a time when the many may be as well off as the few;
when no one will be weighed down by excessive toil; when the necessity
of providing for the body will not interfere with mental improvement;
when the physical frame may be strengthened and developed; and the
religion of all men may become a reasonable service.

Nothing therefore, either in the present state of man or in the
tendencies of the future, as far as we can entertain conjecture of them,
would lead us to suppose that God governs us vindictively in this
world, and therefore we have no reason to infer that he will govern us
vindictively in another. The true argument from analogy is not, 'This
life is a mixed state of justice and injustice, of great waste, of
sudden casualties, of disproportionate punishments, and therefore the
like inconsistencies, irregularities, injustices are to be expected
in another;' but 'This life is subject to law, and is in a state of
progress, and therefore law and progress may be believed to be the
governing principles of another.' All the analogies of this world would
be against unmeaning punishments inflicted a hundred or a thousand years
after an offence had been committed. Suffering there might be as a
part of education, but not hopeless or protracted; as there might be
a retrogression of individuals or of bodies of men, yet not such as to
interfere with a plan for the improvement of the whole (compare Laws.)

9. But some one will say: That we cannot reason from the seen to the
unseen, and that we are creating another world after the image of this,
just as men in former ages have created gods in their own likeness. And
we, like the companions of Socrates, may feel discouraged at hearing
our favourite 'argument from analogy' thus summarily disposed of. Like
himself, too, we may adduce other arguments in which he seems to have
anticipated us, though he expresses them in different language. For we
feel that the soul partakes of the ideal and invisible; and can never
fall into the error of confusing the external circumstances of man with
his higher self; or his origin with his nature. It is as repugnant to
us as it was to him to imagine that our moral ideas are to be attributed
only to cerebral forces. The value of a human soul, like the value of a
man's life to himself, is inestimable, and cannot be reckoned in earthly
or material things. The human being alone has the consciousness of truth
and justice and love, which is the consciousness of God. And the soul
becoming more conscious of these, becomes more conscious of her own
immortality.

10. The last ground of our belief in immortality, and the strongest, is
the perfection of the divine nature. The mere fact of the existence of
God does not tend to show the continued existence of man. An evil God
or an indifferent God might have had the power, but not the will, to
preserve us. He might have regarded us as fitted to minister to his
service by a succession of existences,--like the animals, without
attributing to each soul an incomparable value. But if he is perfect,
he must will that all rational beings should partake of that perfection
which he himself is. In the words of the Timaeus, he is good, and
therefore he desires that all other things should be as like himself as
possible. And the manner in which he accomplishes this is by permitting
evil, or rather degrees of good, which are otherwise called evil.
For all progress is good relatively to the past, and yet may be
comparatively evil when regarded in the light of the future. Good and
evil are relative terms, and degrees of evil are merely the negative
aspect of degrees of good. Of the absolute goodness of any finite nature
we can form no conception; we are all of us in process of transition
from one degree of good or evil to another. The difficulties which
are urged about the origin or existence of evil are mere dialectical
puzzles, standing in the same relation to Christian philosophy as the
puzzles of the Cynics and Megarians to the philosophy of Plato. They
arise out of the tendency of the human mind to regard good and evil both
as relative and absolute; just as the riddles about motion are to be
explained by the double conception of space or matter, which the human
mind has the power of regarding either as continuous or discrete.

In speaking of divine perfection, we mean to say that God is just and
true and loving, the author of order and not of disorder, of good and
not of evil. Or rather, that he is justice, that he is truth, that he
is love, that he is order, that he is the very progress of which we were
speaking; and that wherever these qualities are present, whether in the
human soul or in the order of nature, there is God. We might still see
him everywhere, if we had not been mistakenly seeking for him apart from
us, instead of in us; away from the laws of nature, instead of in
them. And we become united to him not by mystical absorption, but by
partaking, whether consciously or unconsciously, of that truth and
justice and love which he himself is.

Thus the belief in the immortality of the soul rests at last on the
belief in God. If there is a good and wise God, then there is a progress
of mankind towards perfection; and if there is no progress of men
towards perfection, then there is no good and wise God. We cannot
suppose that the moral government of God of which we see the beginnings
in the world and in ourselves will cease when we pass out of life.

11. Considering the 'feebleness of the human faculties and the
uncertainty of the subject,' we are inclined to believe that the fewer
our words the better. At the approach of death there is not much said;
good men are too honest to go out of the world professing more than they
know. There is perhaps no important subject about which, at any time,
even religious people speak so little to one another. In the fulness
of life the thought of death is mostly awakened by the sight or
recollection of the death of others rather than by the prospect of our
own. We must also acknowledge that there are degrees of the belief in
immortality, and many forms in which it presents itself to the mind.
Some persons will say no more than that they trust in God, and that they
leave all to Him. It is a great part of true religion not to pretend
to know more than we do. Others when they quit this world are comforted
with the hope 'That they will see and know their friends in heaven.' But
it is better to leave them in the hands of God and to be assured that
'no evil shall touch them.' There are others again to whom the belief in
a divine personality has ceased to have any longer a meaning; yet they
are satisfied that the end of all is not here, but that something still
remains to us, 'and some better thing for the good than for the evil.'
They are persuaded, in spite of their theological nihilism, that the
ideas of justice and truth and holiness and love are realities. They
cherish an enthusiastic devotion to the first principles of morality.
Through these they see, or seem to see, darkly, and in a figure, that
the soul is immortal.

But besides differences of theological opinion which must ever prevail
about things unseen, the hope of immortality is weaker or stronger in
men at one time of life than at another; it even varies from day to day.
It comes and goes; the mind, like the sky, is apt to be overclouded.
Other generations of men may have sometimes lived under an 'eclipse of
faith,' to us the total disappearance of it might be compared to the
'sun falling from heaven.' And we may sometimes have to begin again and
acquire the belief for ourselves; or to win it back again when it is
lost. It is really weakest in the hour of death. For Nature, like a kind
mother or nurse, lays us to sleep without frightening us; physicians,
who are the witnesses of such scenes, say that under ordinary
circumstances there is no fear of the future. Often, as Plato tells
us, death is accompanied 'with pleasure.' (Tim.) When the end is still
uncertain, the cry of many a one has been, 'Pray, that I may be taken.'
The last thoughts even of the best men depend chiefly on the accidents
of their bodily state. Pain soon overpowers the desire of life; old age,
like the child, is laid to sleep almost in a moment. The long experience
of life will often destroy the interest which mankind have in it. So
various are the feelings with which different persons draw near to
death; and still more various the forms in which imagination clothes it.
For this alternation of feeling compare the Old Testament,--Psalm vi.;
Isaiah; Eccles.

12. When we think of God and of man in his relation to God; of the
imperfection of our present state and yet of the progress which is
observable in the history of the world and of the human mind; of the
depth and power of our moral ideas which seem to partake of the very
nature of God Himself; when we consider the contrast between the
physical laws to which we are subject and the higher law which raises us
above them and is yet a part of them; when we reflect on our capacity of
becoming the 'spectators of all time and all existence,' and of framing
in our own minds the ideal of a perfect Being; when we see how the
human mind in all the higher religions of the world, including Buddhism,
notwithstanding some aberrations, has tended towards such a belief--we
have reason to think that our destiny is different from that of animals;
and though we cannot altogether shut out the childish fear that the soul
upon leaving the body may 'vanish into thin air,' we have still, so far
as the nature of the subject admits, a hope of immortality with which we
comfort ourselves on sufficient grounds. The denial of the belief takes
the heart out of human life; it lowers men to the level of the material.
As Goethe also says, 'He is dead even in this world who has no belief in
another.'

13. It is well also that we should sometimes think of the forms of
thought under which the idea of immortality is most naturally presented
to us. It is clear that to our minds the risen soul can no longer be
described, as in a picture, by the symbol of a creature half-bird,
half-human, nor in any other form of sense. The multitude of angels, as
in Milton, singing the Almighty's praises, are a noble image, and may
furnish a theme for the poet or the painter, but they are no longer an
adequate expression of the kingdom of God which is within us. Neither is
there any mansion, in this world or another, in which the departed can
be imagined to dwell and carry on their occupations. When this earthly
tabernacle is dissolved, no other habitation or building can take them
in: it is in the language of ideas only that we speak of them.

First of all there is the thought of rest and freedom from pain; they
have gone home, as the common saying is, and the cares of this world
touch them no more. Secondly, we may imagine them as they were at
their best and brightest, humbly fulfilling their daily round of
duties--selfless, childlike, unaffected by the world; when the eye was
single and the whole body seemed to be full of light; when the mind was
clear and saw into the purposes of God. Thirdly, we may think of them
as possessed by a great love of God and man, working out His will at a
further stage in the heavenly pilgrimage. And yet we acknowledge that
these are the things which eye hath not seen nor ear heard and therefore
it hath not entered into the heart of man in any sensible manner to
conceive them. Fourthly, there may have been some moments in our own
lives when we have risen above ourselves, or been conscious of our truer
selves, in which the will of God has superseded our wills, and we have
entered into communion with Him, and been partakers for a brief season
of the Divine truth and love, in which like Christ we have been inspired
to utter the prayer, 'I in them, and thou in me, that we may be all made
perfect in one.' These precious moments, if we have ever known them, are
the nearest approach which we can make to the idea of immortality.

14. Returning now to the earlier stage of human thought which is
represented by the writings of Plato, we find that many of the
same questions have already arisen: there is the same tendency to
materialism; the same inconsistency in the application of the idea of
mind; the same doubt whether the soul is to be regarded as a cause or as
an effect; the same falling back on moral convictions. In the Phaedo the
soul is conscious of her divine nature, and the separation from the body
which has been commenced in this life is perfected in another. Beginning
in mystery, Socrates, in the intermediate part of the Dialogue, attempts
to bring the doctrine of a future life into connection with his theory
of knowledge. In proportion as he succeeds in this, the individual seems
to disappear in a more general notion of the soul; the contemplation of
ideas 'under the form of eternity' takes the place of past and future
states of existence. His language may be compared to that of some modern
philosophers, who speak of eternity, not in the sense of perpetual
duration of time, but as an ever-present quality of the soul. Yet at
the conclusion of the Dialogue, having 'arrived at the end of the
intellectual world' (Republic), he replaces the veil of mythology,
and describes the soul and her attendant genius in the language of the
mysteries or of a disciple of Zoroaster. Nor can we fairly demand of
Plato a consistency which is wanting among ourselves, who acknowledge
that another world is beyond the range of human thought, and yet are
always seeking to represent the mansions of heaven or hell in
the colours of the painter, or in the descriptions of the poet or
rhetorician.

15. The doctrine of the immortality of the soul was not new to the
Greeks in the age of Socrates, but, like the unity of God, had a
foundation in the popular belief. The old Homeric notion of a gibbering
ghost flitting away to Hades; or of a few illustrious heroes enjoying
the isles of the blest; or of an existence divided between the two; or
the Hesiodic, of righteous spirits, who become guardian angels,--had
given place in the mysteries and the Orphic poets to representations,
partly fanciful, of a future state of rewards and punishments. (Laws.)
The reticence of the Greeks on public occasions and in some part of
their literature respecting this 'underground' religion, is not to be
taken as a measure of the diffusion of such beliefs. If Pericles in the
funeral oration is silent on the consolations of immortality, the
poet Pindar and the tragedians on the other hand constantly assume the
continued existence of the dead in an upper or under world. Darius
and Laius are still alive; Antigone will be dear to her brethren after
death; the way to the palace of Cronos is found by those who 'have
thrice departed from evil.' The tragedy of the Greeks is not 'rounded'
by this life, but is deeply set in decrees of fate and mysterious
workings of powers beneath the earth. In the caricature of Aristophanes
there is also a witness to the common sentiment. The Ionian and
Pythagorean philosophies arose, and some new elements were added to the
popular belief. The individual must find an expression as well as the
world. Either the soul was supposed to exist in the form of a magnet, or
of a particle of fire, or of light, or air, or water; or of a number or
of a harmony of number; or to be or have, like the stars, a principle
of motion (Arist. de Anim.). At length Anaxagoras, hardly distinguishing
between life and mind, or between mind human and divine, attained
the pure abstraction; and this, like the other abstractions of Greek
philosophy, sank deep into the human intelligence. The opposition of
the intelligible and the sensible, and of God to the world, supplied an
analogy which assisted in the separation of soul and body. If ideas were
separable from phenomena, mind was also separable from matter; if the
ideas were eternal, the mind that conceived them was eternal too. As
the unity of God was more distinctly acknowledged, the conception of the
human soul became more developed. The succession, or alternation of
life and death, had occurred to Heracleitus. The Eleatic Parmenides had
stumbled upon the modern thesis, that 'thought and being are the same.'
The Eastern belief in transmigration defined the sense of individuality;
and some, like Empedocles, fancied that the blood which they had shed
in another state of being was crying against them, and that for thirty
thousand years they were to be 'fugitives and vagabonds upon the earth.'
The desire of recognizing a lost mother or love or friend in the world
below (Phaedo) was a natural feeling which, in that age as well as in
every other, has given distinctness to the hope of immortality. Nor were
ethical considerations wanting, partly derived from the necessity of
punishing the greater sort of criminals, whom no avenging power of this
world could reach. The voice of conscience, too, was heard reminding
the good man that he was not altogether innocent. (Republic.) To these
indistinct longings and fears an expression was given in the mysteries
and Orphic poets: a 'heap of books' (Republic), passing under the names
of Musaeus and Orpheus in Plato's time, were filled with notions of an
under-world.

16. Yet after all the belief in the individuality of the soul after
death had but a feeble hold on the Greek mind. Like the personality of
God, the personality of man in a future state was not inseparably bound
up with the reality of his existence. For the distinction between the
personal and impersonal, and also between the divine and human, was far
less marked to the Greek than to ourselves. And as Plato readily passes
from the notion of the good to that of God, he also passes almost
imperceptibly to himself and his reader from the future life of the
individual soul to the eternal being of the absolute soul. There has
been a clearer statement and a clearer denial of the belief in modern
times than is found in early Greek philosophy, and hence the comparative
silence on the whole subject which is often remarked in ancient writers,
and particularly in Aristotle. For Plato and Aristotle are not further
removed in their teaching about the immortality of the soul than they
are in their theory of knowledge.

17. Living in an age when logic was beginning to mould human thought,
Plato naturally cast his belief in immortality into a logical form. And
when we consider how much the doctrine of ideas was also one of words,
it is not surprising that he should have fallen into verbal fallacies:
early logic is always mistaking the truth of the form for the truth of
the matter. It is easy to see that the alternation of opposites is
not the same as the generation of them out of each other; and that the
generation of them out of each other, which is the first argument in
the Phaedo, is at variance with their mutual exclusion of each other,
whether in themselves or in us, which is the last. For even if we admit
the distinction which he draws between the opposites and the things
which have the opposites, still individuals fall under the latter class;
and we have to pass out of the region of human hopes and fears to a
conception of an abstract soul which is the impersonation of the ideas.
Such a conception, which in Plato himself is but half expressed, is
unmeaning to us, and relative only to a particular stage in the history
of thought. The doctrine of reminiscence is also a fragment of a former
world, which has no place in the philosophy of modern times. But Plato
had the wonders of psychology just opening to him, and he had not the
explanation of them which is supplied by the analysis of language and
the history of the human mind. The question, 'Whence come our abstract
ideas?' he could only answer by an imaginary hypothesis. Nor is it
difficult to see that his crowning argument is purely verbal, and is
but the expression of an instinctive confidence put into a logical
form:--'The soul is immortal because it contains a principle of
imperishableness.' Nor does he himself seem at all to be aware that
nothing is added to human knowledge by his 'safe and simple answer,'
that beauty is the cause of the beautiful; and that he is merely
reasserting the Eleatic being 'divided by the Pythagorean numbers,'
against the Heracleitean doctrine of perpetual generation. The answer to
the 'very serious question' of generation and destruction is really
the denial of them. For this he would substitute, as in the Republic, a
system of ideas, tested, not by experience, but by their consequences,
and not explained by actual causes, but by a higher, that is, a more
general notion. Consistency with themselves is the only test which is to
be applied to them. (Republic, and Phaedo.)

18. To deal fairly with such arguments, they should be translated as
far as possible into their modern equivalents. 'If the ideas of men are
eternal, their souls are eternal, and if not the ideas, then not the
souls.' Such an argument stands nearly in the same relation to Plato and
his age, as the argument from the existence of God to immortality among
ourselves. 'If God exists, then the soul exists after death; and if
there is no God, there is no existence of the soul after death.' For
the ideas are to his mind the reality, the truth, the principle of
permanence, as well as of intelligence and order in the world. When
Simmias and Cebes say that they are more strongly persuaded of the
existence of ideas than they are of the immortality of the soul, they
represent fairly enough the order of thought in Greek philosophy. And we
might say in the same way that we are more certain of the existence
of God than we are of the immortality of the soul, and are led by the
belief in the one to a belief in the other. The parallel, as Socrates
would say, is not perfect, but agrees in as far as the mind in either
case is regarded as dependent on something above and beyond herself. The
analogy may even be pressed a step further: 'We are more certain of our
ideas of truth and right than we are of the existence of God, and
are led on in the order of thought from one to the other.' Or more
correctly: 'The existence of right and truth is the existence of God,
and can never for a moment be separated from Him.'

19. The main argument of the Phaedo is derived from the existence of
eternal ideas of which the soul is a partaker; the other argument of the
alternation of opposites is replaced by this. And there have not been
wanting philosophers of the idealist school who have imagined that the
doctrine of the immortality of the soul is a theory of knowledge, and
that in what has preceded Plato is accommodating himself to the popular
belief. Such a view can only be elicited from the Phaedo by what may
be termed the transcendental method of interpretation, and is obviously
inconsistent with the Gorgias and the Republic. Those who maintain
it are immediately compelled to renounce the shadow which they have
grasped, as a play of words only. But the truth is, that Plato in his
argument for the immortality of the soul has collected many elements of
proof or persuasion, ethical and mythological as well as dialectical,
which are not easily to be reconciled with one another; and he is as
much in earnest about his doctrine of retribution, which is repeated
in all his more ethical writings, as about his theory of knowledge.
And while we may fairly translate the dialectical into the language of
Hegel, and the religious and mythological into the language of Dante or
Bunyan, the ethical speaks to us still in the same voice, and appeals to
a common feeling.

20. Two arguments of this ethical character occur in the Phaedo. The
first may be described as the aspiration of the soul after another state
of being. Like the Oriental or Christian mystic, the philosopher is
seeking to withdraw from impurities of sense, to leave the world and the
things of the world, and to find his higher self. Plato recognizes in
these aspirations the foretaste of immortality; as Butler and Addison in
modern times have argued, the one from the moral tendencies of mankind,
the other from the progress of the soul towards perfection. In using
this argument Plato has certainly confused the soul which has left the
body, with the soul of the good and wise. (Compare Republic.) Such a
confusion was natural, and arose partly out of the antithesis of soul
and body. The soul in her own essence, and the soul 'clothed upon' with
virtues and graces, were easily interchanged with one another, because
on a subject which passes expression the distinctions of language can
hardly be maintained.

21. The ethical proof of the immortality of the soul is derived from the
necessity of retribution. The wicked would be too well off if their
evil deeds came to an end. It is not to be supposed that an Ardiaeus,
an Archelaus, an Ismenias could ever have suffered the penalty of
their crimes in this world. The manner in which this retribution is
accomplished Plato represents under the figures of mythology. Doubtless
he felt that it was easier to improve than to invent, and that in
religion especially the traditional form was required in order to give
verisimilitude to the myth. The myth too is far more probable to that
age than to ours, and may fairly be regarded as 'one guess among
many' about the nature of the earth, which he cleverly supports by the
indications of geology. Not that he insists on the absolute truth of
his own particular notions: 'no man of sense will be confident in such
matters; but he will be confident that something of the kind is true.'
As in other passages (Gorg., Tim., compare Crito), he wins belief for
his fictions by the moderation of his statements; he does not, like
Dante or Swedenborg, allow himself to be deceived by his own creations.

The Dialogue must be read in the light of the situation. And first of
all we are struck by the calmness of the scene. Like the spectators
at the time, we cannot pity Socrates; his mien and his language are
so noble and fearless. He is the same that he ever was, but milder and
gentler, and he has in no degree lost his interest in dialectics;
he will not forego the delight of an argument in compliance with the
jailer's intimation that he should not heat himself with talking. At
such a time he naturally expresses the hope of his life, that he has
been a true mystic and not a mere retainer or wand-bearer: and he refers
to passages of his personal history. To his old enemies the Comic
poets, and to the proceedings on the trial, he alludes playfully; but he
vividly remembers the disappointment which he felt in reading the books
of Anaxagoras. The return of Xanthippe and his children indicates that
the philosopher is not 'made of oak or rock.' Some other traits of his
character may be noted; for example, the courteous manner in which
he inclines his head to the last objector, or the ironical touch, 'Me
already, as the tragic poet would say, the voice of fate calls;' or
the depreciation of the arguments with which 'he comforted himself and
them;' or his fear of 'misology;' or his references to Homer; or the
playful smile with which he 'talks like a book' about greater and less;
or the allusion to the possibility of finding another teacher among
barbarous races (compare Polit.); or the mysterious reference to another
science (mathematics?) of generation and destruction for which he is
vainly feeling. There is no change in him; only now he is invested with
a sort of sacred character, as the prophet or priest of Apollo the God
of the festival, in whose honour he first of all composes a hymn,
and then like the swan pours forth his dying lay. Perhaps the extreme
elevation of Socrates above his own situation, and the ordinary
interests of life (compare his jeu d'esprit about his burial, in which
for a moment he puts on the 'Silenus mask'), create in the mind of the
reader an impression stronger than could be derived from arguments that
such a one has in him 'a principle which does not admit of death.'

The other persons of the Dialogue may be considered under two heads: (1)
private friends; (2) the respondents in the argument.

First there is Crito, who has been already introduced to us in the
Euthydemus and the Crito; he is the equal in years of Socrates, and
stands in quite a different relation to him from his younger disciples.
He is a man of the world who is rich and prosperous (compare the jest
in the Euthydemus), the best friend of Socrates, who wants to know his
commands, in whose presence he talks to his family, and who performs
the last duty of closing his eyes. It is observable too that, as in the
Euthydemus, Crito shows no aptitude for philosophical discussions. Nor
among the friends of Socrates must the jailer be forgotten, who seems
to have been introduced by Plato in order to show the impression made
by the extraordinary man on the common. The gentle nature of the man
is indicated by his weeping at the announcement of his errand and then
turning away, and also by the words of Socrates to his disciples: 'How
charming the man is! since I have been in prison he has been always
coming to me, and is as good as could be to me.' We are reminded
too that he has retained this gentle nature amid scenes of death and
violence by the contrasts which he draws between the behaviour of
Socrates and of others when about to die.

Another person who takes no part in the philosophical discussion is the
excitable Apollodorus, the same who, in the Symposium, of which he is
the narrator, is called 'the madman,' and who testifies his grief by the
most violent emotions. Phaedo is also present, the 'beloved disciple'
as he may be termed, who is described, if not 'leaning on his bosom,'
as seated next to Socrates, who is playing with his hair. He too, like
Apollodorus, takes no part in the discussion, but he loves above all
things to hear and speak of Socrates after his death. The calmness
of his behaviour, veiling his face when he can no longer restrain
his tears, contrasts with the passionate outcries of the other. At a
particular point the argument is described as falling before the attack
of Simmias. A sort of despair is introduced in the minds of the company.
The effect of this is heightened by the description of Phaedo, who has
been the eye-witness of the scene, and by the sympathy of his Phliasian
auditors who are beginning to think 'that they too can never trust an
argument again.' And the intense interest of the company is communicated
not only to the first auditors, but to us who in a distant country read
the narrative of their emotions after more than two thousand years have
passed away.

The two principal interlocutors are Simmias and Cebes, the disciples of
Philolaus the Pythagorean philosopher of Thebes. Simmias is described
in the Phaedrus as fonder of an argument than any man living; and
Cebes, although finally persuaded by Socrates, is said to be the most
incredulous of human beings. It is Cebes who at the commencement of
the Dialogue asks why 'suicide is held to be unlawful,' and who
first supplies the doctrine of recollection in confirmation of the
pre-existence of the soul. It is Cebes who urges that the pre-existence
does not necessarily involve the future existence of the soul, as is
shown by the illustration of the weaver and his coat. Simmias, on the
other hand, raises the question about harmony and the lyre, which is
naturally put into the mouth of a Pythagorean disciple. It is Simmias,
too, who first remarks on the uncertainty of human knowledge, and
only at last concedes to the argument such a qualified approval as is
consistent with the feebleness of the human faculties. Cebes is the
deeper and more consecutive thinker, Simmias more superficial and
rhetorical; they are distinguished in much the same manner as Adeimantus
and Glaucon in the Republic.

Other persons, Menexenus, Ctesippus, Lysis, are old friends; Evenus
has been already satirized in the Apology; Aeschines and Epigenes
were present at the trial; Euclid and Terpsion will reappear in the
Introduction to the Theaetetus, Hermogenes has already appeared in
the Cratylus. No inference can fairly be drawn from the absence of
Aristippus, nor from the omission of Xenophon, who at the time of
Socrates' death was in Asia. The mention of Plato's own absence seems
like an expression of sorrow, and may, perhaps, be an indication that
the report of the conversation is not to be taken literally.

The place of the Dialogue in the series is doubtful. The doctrine of
ideas is certainly carried beyond the Socratic point of view; in no
other of the writings of Plato is the theory of them so completely
developed. Whether the belief in immortality can be attributed to
Socrates or not is uncertain; the silence of the Memorabilia, and of the
earlier Dialogues of Plato, is an argument to the contrary. Yet in the
Cyropaedia Xenophon has put language into the mouth of the dying Cyrus
which recalls the Phaedo, and may have been derived from the teaching of
Socrates. It may be fairly urged that the greatest religious interest of
mankind could not have been wholly ignored by one who passed his life in
fulfilling the commands of an oracle, and who recognized a Divine plan
in man and nature. (Xen. Mem.) And the language of the Apology and of
the Crito confirms this view.

The Phaedo is not one of the Socratic Dialogues of Plato; nor, on the
other hand, can it be assigned to that later stage of the Platonic
writings at which the doctrine of ideas appears to be forgotten. It
belongs rather to the intermediate period of the Platonic philosophy,
which roughly corresponds to the Phaedrus, Gorgias, Republic,
Theaetetus. Without pretending to determine the real time of their
composition, the Symposium, Meno, Euthyphro, Apology, Phaedo may be
conveniently read by us in this order as illustrative of the life of
Socrates. Another chain may be formed of the Meno, Phaedrus, Phaedo,
in which the immortality of the soul is connected with the doctrine of
ideas. In the Meno the theory of ideas is based on the ancient belief in
transmigration, which reappears again in the Phaedrus as well as in the
Republic and Timaeus, and in all of them is connected with a doctrine of
retribution. In the Phaedrus the immortality of the soul is supposed to
rest on the conception of the soul as a principle of motion, whereas in
the Republic the argument turns on the natural continuance of the soul,
which, if not destroyed by her own proper evil, can hardly be destroyed
by any other. The soul of man in the Timaeus is derived from the Supreme
Creator, and either returns after death to her kindred star, or descends
into the lower life of an animal. The Apology expresses the same view
as the Phaedo, but with less confidence; there the probability of death
being a long sleep is not excluded. The Theaetetus also describes, in a
digression, the desire of the soul to fly away and be with God--'and to
fly to him is to be like him.' The Symposium may be observed to
resemble as well as to differ from the Phaedo. While the first notion of
immortality is only in the way of natural procreation or of posthumous
fame and glory, the higher revelation of beauty, like the good in the
Republic, is the vision of the eternal idea. So deeply rooted in
Plato's mind is the belief in immortality; so various are the forms of
expression which he employs.

As in several other Dialogues, there is more of system in the Phaedo
than appears at first sight. The succession of arguments is based on
previous philosophies; beginning with the mysteries and the Heracleitean
alternation of opposites, and proceeding to the Pythagorean harmony and
transmigration; making a step by the aid of Platonic reminiscence, and
a further step by the help of the nous of Anaxagoras; until at last we
rest in the conviction that the soul is inseparable from the ideas,
and belongs to the world of the invisible and unknown. Then, as in
the Gorgias or Republic, the curtain falls, and the veil of mythology
descends upon the argument. After the confession of Socrates that he is
an interested party, and the acknowledgment that no man of sense will
think the details of his narrative true, but that something of the kind
is true, we return from speculation to practice. He is himself more
confident of immortality than he is of his own arguments; and the
confidence which he expresses is less strong than that which his
cheerfulness and composure in death inspire in us.

Difficulties of two kinds occur in the Phaedo--one kind to be explained
out of contemporary philosophy, the other not admitting of an entire
solution. (1) The difficulty which Socrates says that he experienced in
explaining generation and corruption; the assumption of hypotheses which
proceed from the less general to the more general, and are tested by
their consequences; the puzzle about greater and less; the resort to the
method of ideas, which to us appear only abstract terms,--these are to
be explained out of the position of Socrates and Plato in the history of
philosophy. They were living in a twilight between the sensible and
the intellectual world, and saw no way of connecting them. They
could neither explain the relation of ideas to phenomena, nor their
correlation to one another. The very idea of relation or comparison was
embarrassing to them. Yet in this intellectual uncertainty they had a
conception of a proof from results, and of a moral truth, which remained
unshaken amid the questionings of philosophy. (2) The other is a
difficulty which is touched upon in the Republic as well as in the
Phaedo, and is common to modern and ancient philosophy. Plato is not
altogether satisfied with his safe and simple method of ideas. He wants
to have proved to him by facts that all things are for the best, and
that there is one mind or design which pervades them all. But this
'power of the best' he is unable to explain; and therefore takes refuge
in universal ideas. And are not we at this day seeking to discover that
which Socrates in a glass darkly foresaw?

Some resemblances to the Greek drama may be noted in all the Dialogues
of Plato. The Phaedo is the tragedy of which Socrates is the protagonist
and Simmias and Cebes the secondary performers, standing to them in the
same relation as to Glaucon and Adeimantus in the Republic. No Dialogue
has a greater unity of subject and feeling. Plato has certainly
fulfilled the condition of Greek, or rather of all art, which requires
that scenes of death and suffering should be clothed in beauty. The
gathering of the friends at the commencement of the Dialogue, the
dismissal of Xanthippe, whose presence would have been out of place at
a philosophical discussion, but who returns again with her children to
take a final farewell, the dejection of the audience at the temporary
overthrow of the argument, the picture of Socrates playing with the
hair of Phaedo, the final scene in which Socrates alone retains his
composure--are masterpieces of art. And the chorus at the end might have
interpreted the feeling of the play: 'There can no evil happen to a good
man in life or death.'

'The art of concealing art' is nowhere more perfect than in those
writings of Plato which describe the trial and death of Socrates. Their
charm is their simplicity, which gives them verisimilitude; and yet
they touch, as if incidentally, and because they were suitable to the
occasion, on some of the deepest truths of philosophy. There is nothing
in any tragedy, ancient or modern, nothing in poetry or history (with
one exception), like the last hours of Socrates in Plato. The master
could not be more fitly occupied at such a time than in discoursing of
immortality; nor the disciples more divinely consoled. The arguments,
taken in the spirit and not in the letter, are our arguments; and
Socrates by anticipation may be even thought to refute some 'eccentric
notions; current in our own age. For there are philosophers among
ourselves who do not seem to understand how much stronger is the power
of intelligence, or of the best, than of Atlas, or mechanical force.
How far the words attributed to Socrates were actually uttered by him we
forbear to ask; for no answer can be given to this question. And it
is better to resign ourselves to the feeling of a great work, than to
linger among critical uncertainties.
